A STROKE survivor and her fiancé have been recognised for their bravery.

Videographer Donna Watson, 26, had a stroke in February 2013, just five months after giving birth to her first baby girl, Millie Alice.

It left her paralysed down the right side of her body and unable to swallow. Her speech, hearing and vision was also severely affected.

Against doctors’ expectations, Donna, from Peterlee, walked out of hospital using a walking stick three months later, and is aiming to walk unaided down the aisle at her wedding to fiancé Nicky King next year.

She also recently took part in the Stroke Association’s Step out for Stroke fundraising walk in Gateshead, alongside 25 of her close friends and family, when she walked the whole mile course with the aid of Millie Alice’s pushchair.

Her sister Lyndsey, who was among those who nominated Donna for the Adult Courage award from the Stroke Associaton, said: “She is an amazing mother and inspiration and she is positive she will lead a normal life again.”

Donna’s fiancé Nicky was also recognised with a Carer Award. Donna said: “When I had my stroke, I called Nicky who found me at home and called 999. He travelled 40 minutes every day to visit me in hospital with Millie, and helped me with my speech and coordination. When I returned home, Nicky walked with me daily and helped me with my exercises, cooking me healthy meals and helping me and Millie get ready each day.”

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

Sunderland Echo provides news, events and sport features from the Sunderland area. For the best up to date information relating to Sunderland and the surrounding areas visit us at Sunderland Echo regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website Sunderland Echo requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.